By Nathan Kuczmarski ’22
If you’ve been on campus during the past two weeks, there’s a good chance you’ve seen one of these signs. They’re on stairs, other signs, ceilings, walls, doors, mirrors, and more, but a constant question that has come from them is “what do they mean?”
The signs picturing a gray text bubble on a white background said either “DON’T LOOK AT THE MOON” or “The sky will look nice tonight” and are part of a campaign for the Lens–a new filmmaking club at Ignatius. The signs are for the club’s first ever film contest in which participants can win up to $100 for making a video three minutes or less related to a prompt.
According to the club’s leaders, the club seeks to bring the filmmakers and photographers of Saint Ignatius together to work on projects, help each other improve, and compete in contests. Their first film contest is based on a prompt as ominous as their signs:
“It’s 3AM. An alert from the Emergency Broadcast System wakes you up. It says “DON’T LOOK AT THE MOON.” You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending “It’s a beautiful night tonight. Look outside.”
According to the Lens website, the film must incorporate this prompt in some way, but there is great space for creativity in each person’s submission and the site does not outline exactly how the theme given in the prompt should be implemented. Entrants can submit their short films any time before 11:59pm on Sunday, April 18th.
Once all submissions have been submitted, the films will be reviewed by a panel of judges including members of the Ignatius faculty, film professionals, and non-participating Lens members who will decide which film best performs overall based on various categories.
The contest is open to anyone who would like to participate and those interested can find more about the competition on the contest website.
